Life Blood --IX---Page 31



was gave you this, I suppose there's always the chance she made
an innocent mistake. But still, what's he doing with this stuff at all?
They manufacture it down in Mexico, and also, I've heard,
somewhere in Central America, but it's not approved in the U.S.
Anybody who dispenses this to a patient is putting their license at
risk." She paused to give me one of those looks. "Assuming Alex
Goddard even has a medical license. These 'alternative medicine'
types sometimes claim they answer to a higher power, they're
board-certified by God."
"I don't for a minute think it was an 'innocent mistake.' " I was beginning to feel terribly betrayed and violated. I also was getting mad as hell, my fingertips tingling. "But why would he give me these drugs at all? Did he somehow—?"
"I think you'd better ask him," she said passing me a bagel piled high with cream cheese and sturgeon.
She bit into her own bagel and for a while we both just
chewed in silence. I, however, had just lost all my appetite. Alex
Goddard who might well be my last chance for a baby, had just
dispensed massive doses of illegal drugs to me. Which, my
longtime ob/gyn was warning me, were both unnecessary and
unethical.
"What do you think I should do?" I asked finally, breaking the silence but barely able to get my voice out.
She didn't say anything. She'd finished her bagel, and now she'd begun wrapping up the container of cream cheese, folding the wax paper back over the remaining sturgeon. I thought her silent treatment was her way of telling me my brunch consultation was over. She clearly was exasperated with me.
"Let me tell you a story," she said finally, as she carefully
began putting the leftover sturgeon back into the Zabar's bag.
"When I was eight years old all the Jews in our Polish ghetto were
starving because the Nazis refused to give us food stamps. So my
father bribed a Nazi officer to let him go out into the countryside to
try to buy some eggs and flour, anything, just so we could eat.
The farmer came that Saturday morning in a horse-drawn wagon
to pick up my father. At the last minute, I asked to go with him and
he let me. That night the Nazis liquidated our entire ghetto, almost
five thousand people. No one else in my family survived. Not my
mother, not my two sisters, not anyone."
Her voice had become totally dispassionate, matter-of- fact,
as though repression of the horror was the only way a sane
person could deal with it. She could just as easily have been





describing a country outing as she continued. I did notice,
however, that her East European accent had suddenly become
very prominent, as though she was returning there in her
thoughts.
"When we learned what had happened, my father asked the
farmer we were visiting to go to a certain rural doctor we knew
and beg him to give us some poison, so we could commit suicide
before the Nazis got us too. The doctor, however, told him he had
only enough poison for his own family. He did, however, give him
a prescription for us. But when my father begged that farmer to go
to a pharmacy and get the poison, he and his entire family
refused. Instead, they hid us in their barn for over a year, even
though they knew it meant a firing squad if the Nazis found us."
She glared at me. "Do you understand what I'm saying? They told
us that if we wanted to do something foolish because we were
desperate, we would have to do it without their help."
        It was the first time I ever knew her real story. I was stunned.
        "What, exactly, are you driving at?" I think I already knew. The
 long, trusting relationship we'd shared was now teetering on the
brink. By going to see Alex Goddard—even if it was partly a
research trip to check him out—I had disappointed her terribly.
She'd lost respect for me. She thought I was desperate and about
to embark on something foolish.
"I'm saying do whatever you want." She got up and lifted her
coat off the corner rack. "But get those drugs out of here. I don't
want them anywhere near this office. I tried everything legal there
was to get you pregnant. If that wasn't good enough for you and
now you want to go to some quack, that's your affair. Let me just
warn you that combining gonadotropin and HMG Massone at
these dosages is like putting your ovaries on steroids; you get
massive egg production for a couple of cycles, but the long-term damage could be severe. I strongly advise you against it, but if
you insist and then start having complications, I would appreciate not being involved."
Translation: If you start fooling around with Alex Goddard, don't ever come back.
It felt like a dagger in my chest. What was I going to do? One
thought: Okay, so these drugs aren't the way, but you couldn't
help me get pregnant. All I did was spend twenty thousand dollars
on futile procedures. Not to mention the heartbreak.
        "You know," I said finally, maybe a little sharply, "I think we
ought to be working together, not at cross-purposes."





"You're welcome to think what you like," she bristled. "But I have to tell you I don't appreciate your tone."
        I guess I'd really ticked her off, and it hurt to do it. Then,
finally, her own rejection of me was sinking in.
        "So that's it? You're telling me if I try anything except exactly
what you want me to, then just don't ever come back."
        "I've said all I intend to." She was resolutely ushering me
toward the door, her eyes abruptly blank.
Well, I told myself, going from anger to despair, then back to
anger, whatever else I might think about Alex Goddard, at least he
doesn't kick people out because of their problems, even a sad
soul like Tara.
Still, what about these illegal drugs? There I was, caught in
the middle—between an honorable woman who had failed, and
Alex Goddard, who'd just lived up to my worst suspicions.
Heading down in the elevator, alone, I could still hear Hannah
Klein's rejection, and warning, ringing in my ears. Maybe she had
just confirmed that still, small voice of rationality lecturing me from
the back of my mind.
I marched out onto the empty Sunday streets of upper
Broadway, and when I got to the corner, I stood for a long moment looking up at the pitiless blue of the sky. The sun was there, but in my soul I felt all the light was gone.
Finally I opened the first bottle and then, one by one, I began taking out the gel-caps and dropping them into the rainwater grate there at my feet, watching them bounce like the metal sphere in an old pinball machine before disappearing into the darkness
below. When both bottles were empty, I tossed them into the wire trash basket I'd been standing next to.
The next time I saw Alex Goddard, he was going to have a
hell of a lot of explaining to do. Beginning with why he'd given me a glimmer of hope, only to then cruelly snatch it back. I found myself hating him with all my being.

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